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BNSF - Mississippi River Bridge (Ball Club)

Itasca County, Minnesota

Photo 

Technical Drawing by Douglas Butler

Photo taken by Douglas Butler in July 2019

Enlarge

BH Photo #476241

Map 

Street View 

Description 

Information comes from Great Northern Bridge Records at Minnesota Historical Society

Facts 

Overview
Deck plate girder bridge over Mississippi River on BNSF Railway
Location
Itasca County, Minnesota
Status
Open to traffic
History
Built 1908
Railroads
- BNSF Railway (BNSF)
- Great Northern Railway (GN)
Design
Deck plate girder with swing span (non-functional?)
Dimensions
Length of largest span: 115.0 ft.
Total length: 598.0 ft.
Approximate latitude, longitude
+47.32446, -93.95977   (decimal degrees)
47°19'28" N, 93°57'35" W   (degrees°minutes'seconds")
Approximate UTM coordinates
15/427476/5241667 (zone/easting/northing)
Quadrangle map:
Ball Club
Inventory number
BH 77821 (Bridgehunter.com ID)

Categories 

BNSF Railway (1,591)
Built 1908 (789)
Built during 1900s (7,687)
Deck girder (6,348)
Girder (11,243)
Great Northern Railway (396)
Have street view (29,327)
Itasca County, Minnesota (18)
Minnesota (1,654)
 Mississippi River (232)
Movable (3,139)
Open (41,016)
Owned by railroad (13,601)
Plate girder (8,788)
Railroad (16,559)
Span length 100-125 feet (4,584)
Swing (1,578)
Total length 500-1000 feet (3,102)

Update Log 

  • August 8, 2020: Updated by John Marvig: added information
  • July 15, 2020: Updated by Roger Deschner: Added category "Mississippi River"
  • July 14, 2020: New photo from Douglas Butler
  • July 4, 2017: New Street View added by James Baughn

Sources 

  • Douglas Butler
  • John Marvig - marvigj27 [at] gmail [dot] com
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Comments 

BNSF - Mississippi River Bridge (Ball Club)
Posted July 16, 2020, by Roger Deschner (rogerdeschner [at] gmail [dot] com)

The Street View of this bridge is fairly interesting.

The Google camera was mounted on a boat on the Mississippi River. You can use Google Street View to travel quite a ways upstream and downstream on the river.

It can be a bit hard to figure out what this bridge is about, until you realize there is a train on it.

The turntable mechanism does not look operable anymore. And anyway, any boat high enough to require this bridge to open, could not fit under the adjacent modern US-2 bridge, visible in the background.